National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Madam President, 3 years ago, President Obama announced that DREAMers--young people who were brought to the United States as children--would have the opportunity to apply for temporary protection from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program or what has become known as DACA.

Today, more than 660,000 young people across this Nation have benefitted from DACA, including more than 7,000 in my home State of New Mexico. These are some of our brightest students and veterans who no longer have to fear deportation. Not only do DREAMers want to earn an education and work, they want to give back to their communities and their country. In fact, I would suggest that DREAMers don't know how to be anything but American.

We hear again and again of the remarkable stories of immigrants overcoming very difficult challenges in the genuine pursuit of a better life. Across the country, there are DREAMers working to become doctors, scientists, lawyers, and engineers. They want to start businesses or teach in classrooms. They want to contribute to America's success.

I had the privilege of meeting these twin sisters who are pictured here, Jazmin and Yazmin, earlier this year. They immigrated to the United States with their mother from Mexico when they were just 3 years old.

As students at Del Norte High School in Albuquerque, Jazmin and Yazmin worked hard to earn good grades, and as juniors and seniors, they took dual credit courses at Central New Mexico Community College.

Jazmin will graduate magna cum laude from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor of business administration, concentrating in finance. She earned an interdisciplinary studies distinction from the University of New Mexico Honors College, and her sister Yazmin would go on to graduate magna cum laude from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor of science in biology and Spanish, a minor in chemistry, and completed the University Honors Program. She received departmental summa cum laude honors.

These two young women are working tirelessly to ensure they have a better future for themselves and their mother.

In August, Jazmin will begin her second year at the University of New Mexico School of Law, and Yazmin will begin her first year at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Given their immigration status, the journey for Jazmin and Yazmin to get to where they are today was anything but easy. They have overcome many hardships, including homelessness and hunger.

After their mother--who is a single mom--suffered a stroke, it was up to them to find work to support their family, cover her medical costs, and pay for their education. To this day, there is another heavy burden these young women carry with them; it is living with the fear that at any moment their mother, whom they love dearly, will be deported because of her immigration status. Under these circumstances, you have to ask what drives these two bright young women and what keeps them going, and it is simple: They want to give back to their communities.

Jazmin, who is currently a summer law clerk at New Mexico's Center on Law and Poverty, wants to be a lawyer to ensure that every person has equal access to the law.

Yazmin, who is currently a medical assistant at the Casa de Salud Medical Office in the South Valley, wants to be a primary care physician so she can help families gain access to quality health care.

This is who DREAMers are, and I think their stories are absolutely inspiring.

This young man's name is Cesar. He is 26 years old and a DACA recipient.

Cesar and his family moved from Ciudad Juarez to Las Cruces, NM, when he was in the fifth grade.

As a middle and high school student, he earned great grades, and through local scholarships he enrolled at New Mexico State University. He earned a bachelor degree in biology, microbiology, and Spanish, not to mention minors in chemistry and biochemistry.

When he graduated from college in 2011, Cesar couldn't put his degrees to work because of his immigration status. So instead of working in the laboratory, he went to work as a landscaper.

When the President made his DACA announcement, Cesar immediately applied and was approved for deferred action. Because of DACA, Cesar was able to work and earn an income to help pay for graduate school.

This year, Cesar earned his master's degree in biology and a minor in molecular biology from New Mexico State University, where he focused his research on bioinformatics.

Cesar makes it a point to get involved in the local community. He has volunteered at La Casa and helped with the biology graduate organization. He said:

Once you start volunteering, you wish you had more time because you love it so much. It can improve your outlook on everything you're doing.

Cesar's dream is to become a doctor so he can work to help prevent disease. Soon he will take a major step toward that goal. This coming school year, Cesar will be a medical and Ph.D. student at Loyola University in Chicago. ``DACA has changed my life,'' he said. ``Within two to three years, I went from working in landscaping to becoming a medical student.''

The stories of Cesar, Jazmin, and Yazmin represent what makes this country great. They are inspiring, and there are hundreds of thousands of DREAMers like them across this country.

Immigrants make the United States a more prosperous nation. In New Mexico, our State's remarkable history is rooted in our diversity, our history, and our culture, which has always been enriched by our immigrant communities and their family members.

My own father is an immigrant who came to America from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and I am sure many of us in this Chamber have immigrant roots in our own families which have contributed to America's success story. We are not a country that kicks out our best and brightest students, and we are not a nation that tears families apart.

The current DACA Program is only a temporary solution. DACA recipients have to renew every 2 years in order to maintain their deferred status, but that is no way to live. It is unfair for these DREAMers to live their lives 2 years at a time. We desperately need robust immigration reform.

Now, let's step back for a moment and remember that the Senate passed a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration bill almost 2 years ago now. That bill would have modernized our immigration system to meet the needs of our economy, provided an accountable pathway to earned citizenship for the undocumented workers currently living in the shadows, including making the DREAM Act the law of the land, and it would have dramatically strengthened security at our borders. Accountable immigration reform received 68 votes in this body and demonstrated the kind of legislation we can pass when we work together.

As a nation, we value the twin promises of freedom and opportunity. Those ideals are important no matter where you were born. However, too many of my Republican colleagues don't see it that way. Several of them want to rescind or even defund DACA and roll back the progress we have made over the past 3 years.

Why would we end such a successful program? What I would say to those who do this is come back to the table and work with us to pass immigration reform.

We need pragmatic solutions to fix our broken immigration laws, and we need them now. Let's make the dream a reality after all.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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